Birdhouse garden (source: Archív M.S.)
Naturalist Miroslav Saniga has more than two hundred birdhouses in his garden, attracting many kids and tourists. He calls his garden Bird Paradise or the Fairy Tale Bird Garden.
The bird count in Europe has critically decreased, so building birdhouses is not only a fun hobby but also vital for the protection of birds, Saniga pointed out for the Sme daily.
Birdhouses must be properly built. Lockdown is a good time to start because birds might nest in them as soon as spring comes around.
In a house garden
The birds are able to eat 1000 kilograms of sunflower and other seeds. Saniga set up feeding stations in a house garden in the village of Liptovská Revúca (Žilina Region). This location has become a bird paradise.
The habitats are of all shapes with crooked and flat roofs, round and square entrances, and decorative pictures and signs. They are everywhere. New additions to the bird paradise include towers that have multiple birdhouses built upon them.
Saniga describes the garden as "a paradise that provides full service to birds, including accommodatioin in the most luxurious houses along with food," Sme wrote.
Saniga is not only a capable birdhouse craftsman. His love of birds is in his job description. As a naturalist, he works at the Institute of Forest Ecology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He studies bird communities, bird ecology and the biodiversity of our ecosystems.
Saniga also dedicates his time to writing. He writes professional publications as well as books for children and adults concerning human relationships to nature.
He emphasised that building birdhouses should no longer be a hobby, but an activity everybody partakes in. The amount of birds in Europe is decreasing and the harm to biodiversity shows that the amount of regular bird species has dropped 55 percent.
Half of the nesting birds in Slovakia are endangered due to the cutting down of trees in national parks. Rare species are in danger of becoming extinct and the existence of regular species is rapidly decreasing.
"It used to be that sparrows occupied every courtyard. Now only town and city elders remember this," said one colleague of Saniga, as quoted by Sme.
The benefits to building birdhouses could potentially help the critical situation.
